From a Baudelaire stanza to a cinematic platform
In November 2012 Louis Vuitton released the first chapter of L'Invitation au Voyage, a cinematic advertising platform that converted the brand's long-running travel theme from print into film.1, 2 The title was drawn directly from Charles Baudelaire's 1857 poem of the same name, included in the Spleen and Idéal section of Les Fleurs du Mal, in which the poet calls a beloved companion to journey toward an idealised destination.3 The first chapter was directed by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, photographed by the same duo for the parallel print insertion, and starred the British-American model Arizona Muse.1, 2 The film was staged inside the Musée du Louvre and ended with Muse rising in a hot-air balloon from the courtyard beneath the glass pyramid.1
The decision to anchor the platform on Baudelaire mattered to the way Louis Vuitton positioned the campaign within its communications architecture. The Core Values series, launched in 2007 with Annie Leibovitz and continued through 2012, had built a portrait register around still photography.4 L'Invitation au Voyage carried the travel theme forward but moved its voice into a thirty-second and ninety-second cinematic format, set to an existing music track, with a dramaturgical opening, middle and close. The film was scheduled for international television and cinema slots and ran across digital platforms in a separate cut.1 The Louvre setting installed the campaign within the French cultural canon and tied the Maison's address to a national museum architecture rather than to an aspirational lifestyle setting.
The Louvre opening and the Inez and Vinoodh signature
Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, the duo who also photographed the print campaign, brought a visual approach known across the European advertising press of the period as "cinéma-publicitaire": long takes, low-saturation grading, a single performer photographed from architectural distance. The Louis Vuitton brief gave them the closed Louvre at night, a four-minute setup, a steamer trunk, a balloon and a single model. Muse walked from the Cour Carrée through the Louvre's interior galleries, opened the steamer trunk in the central courtyard, and rose in the balloon from beneath the I. M. Pei glass pyramid.1 The music, John Murphy's "In the House - In a Heartbeat", accompanied the sequence without dialogue.1, 2
The opening film carried two product references. The steamer trunk, a direct quotation of the flat-topped Vuitton trunks first produced in Asnières in 1859, appeared as the central object of the sequence.5 The hand-luggage that Muse carried into the balloon was the Speedy 30 in Monogram canvas, a silhouette drawn in 1930 and the most produced bag in the Maison's catalogue by the early 2010s.3, 5 The film resisted close-up product staging and kept both items at editorial distance.
Source: siuoo Youtube
The Venice chapter with David Bowie
In November 2013, one year after the Louvre release, Louis Vuitton released a second chapter set in Venice.2, 6 Romain Gavras directed the new film; David Sims photographed the still campaign.2, 6 The Venice chapter brought Arizona Muse back as the protagonist and added David Bowie, who appeared seated at a harpsichord at a masquerade ball, performing a stripped harpsichord arrangement of "I'd Rather Be High" from his album The Next Day, released in March 2013.3, 6, 7 The song's choice was a Bowie decision communicated directly to the brand and was the first commercial use of the track. The Venice setting picked up the balloon arrival from the closing frame of the Louvre chapter and folded the second film into the first.2, 6
The Venice chapter widened the cast and the budget. Trade press of the period reported a production cost above three million euros for the second film, against an estimated one-and-a-half million for the Louvre opener. The cinema release ran across European television in late November and December 2013 and the campaign's print insertions appeared in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, AnOther and the international fashion press. Coverage in Lürzer's Archive in 2014 read the two chapters as the most fully realised cinematic advertising platform produced by a French luxury house in the early 2010s.8
The platform inside the brand architecture
L'Invitation au Voyage formalised a separation that the Maison's communications had been working toward since the start of Antoine Arnault's tenure as Head of Communications in 2007.3 Core Values, with Annie Leibovitz, remained the print platform and stayed anchored to portraiture of named legends. L'Invitation au Voyage, with rotating directors and a stable visual signature, became the cinematic platform and remained anchored to fictional protagonists in canonical destinations. Core Values ended in 2012, and from 2015 onward Nicolas Ghesquière's seasonal campaigns absorbed the bulk of the brand's advertising volume.4
The legacy of the platform sits in the language it set for later Louis Vuitton film work. The Spirit of Travel campaign, launched by Patrick Demarchelier in 2015, took the cinematic register that L'Invitation au Voyage had established and adapted it to a still-photography format anchored on Caribbean and later Bolivian locations.9 Pharrell Williams's January 2026 Art of Travel campaign, photographed by Drew Vickers, cited the L'Invitation au Voyage editorial register in its press communication.9 The Baudelaire title remained available to the brand and continued to appear in the magazine sections of louisvuitton.com under the L'Invitation au Voyage heading through the rest of the decade.
Within the longer history of luxury advertising, the platform stood as the first sustained attempt by a major French Maison to build an advertising voice on a literary source. The Baudelaire reference reframed Louis Vuitton's travel theme as a literary tradition rather than as a marketing claim and aligned the brand with a French canon that the Fondation Louis Vuitton, then under construction for an October 2014 opening, would extend into the visual arts within two years.5
Source: infoperiodistas Youtube
Written with AI assistance, edited by a human. Find out more about our Use of AI.
1. The launch of the first chapter, in three reports, all added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only: WWD, "Louis Vuitton Launching 'Art of Travel' Campaign", first published in the 30 October 2012 issue (the page shows no byline; the headline is the one the page is indexed under), for l'Invitation au voyage as a travel campaign in print, film and digital versions starring Arizona Muse, photographed by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin at the Louvre in September 2012 and launching from mid-November; The Drum, Ishbel Macleod, "Louis Vuitton unveils its first TV ad: L'invitation Au Voyage", 14 November 2012, for the film as the house's television advertisement directed by the pair Inez and Vinoodh, and for Muse entering the Louvre, studying a famous painting, discovering the contents of a trunk and leaving in a striped hot-air balloon; The Upcoming, Hollie Bracciale, "Louis Vuitton launches its first fashion film with Arizona Muse", 19 November 2012, for the film being made for television and cinema, for Muse opening a classic Louis Vuitton trunk with a small key and escaping by hot-air balloon over Paris, and for the music by composer John Murphy. https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/bon-voyage-6462246/ https://www.thedrum.com/news/louis-vuitton-unveils-its-first-tv-ad-linvitation-au-voyage https://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2012/11/19/louis-vuitton-launches-its-first-fashion-film-with-arizona-muse/
2. The production credits of both chapters. The Inspiration Room, "Louis Vuitton L'Invitation Au Voyage", listed in the verse's sources for these credits, now redirects to an unrelated site, page not reachable on 1 October 2026. It is replaced by the two Packshotmag credit pages, added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only: "Louis Vuitton - L'Invitation Au Voyage", 13 November 2012, for the first film's first broadcast on 11 November 2012, its direction by Inez and Vinoodh and Arizona Muse at the Louvre, and "Louis Vuitton - L'Invitation au Voyage", 8 November 2013, for the Venice film's first airing on 7 November 2013, its direction by Romain Gavras, the balloon journey from the Louvre courtyard to Venice, and Arizona Muse with David Bowie at the harpsichord. La Réclame, Paul B., "Musique de la pub Louis Vuitton : l'invitation au Voyage", 12 November 2012, also added, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the first film's direction by Inez and Vinoodh and for its music, John Murphy's "In the House - In a Heartbeat". https://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2016/louis-vuitton-linvitation-au-voyage/ https://www.packshotmag.com/films/louis-vuitton-linvitation-au-voyage-2/ https://www.packshotmag.com/films/louis-vuitton-linvitation-au-voyage/ https://lareclame.fr/45855+louis+vuitton+invitation+au+voyage
3. Wikipedia, "Charles Baudelaire", "Les Fleurs du mal", "Louis Vuitton", "Antoine Arnault", "Romain Gavras", "David Bowie", "The Next Day" and "Arizona Muse", all read 1 October 2026, for Les Fleurs du mal having been published in 1857 with "L'Invitation au voyage" in its Spleen et Idéal section, for the Speedy bag produced in 1930, for Antoine Arnault becoming director of communications at Louis Vuitton in 2007, for Bowie's return in 2013 with The Next Day, released on 8 March 2013 with "I'd Rather Be High" among its tracks, and for the Louis Vuitton advertisement in which Bowie played a harpsichord and sang the song, and for Arizona Muse appearing in a Louis Vuitton advertisement with Bowie (her page describes her as an American model). Antoine Arnault's page was added during the retrofit. Romain Gavras's page, listed in the verse's sources, does not mention the Louis Vuitton film; his credit rests on notes 2 and 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Fleurs_du_mal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Vuitton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Arnault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romain_Gavras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Muse
4. Design You Trust, "Louis Vuitton's 'Core Values' Campaign (2007-2012) By Annie Leibovitz", February 2016, added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the Core Values campaign beginning in 2007 with Annie Leibovitz and running through 2012. https://designyoutrust.com/2016/02/louis-vuittons-core-values-campaign-2007-2012-by-annie-leibovitz/
5. Louis Vuitton, "Louis Vuitton's Heritage: A History Since 1854", house magazine article, undated, read 1 October 2026, for the flat top that replaced the rounded trunk lid around 1860, for the plot bought in Asnières-sur-Seine in 1859, and for the Speedy, created in the 1930s as the Express carry-on bag; and LVMH, "The Fondation Louis Vuitton will open its doors to the public on Monday, 27 October 2014", 23 June 2014, for the Fondation's opening in October 2014. The verse's sources listed only the index pages of the Louis Vuitton magazine and of LVMH news; these are the matching pages on them. https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/magazine/articles/heritage https://www.lvmh.com/en/publications/the-fondation-louis-vuitton-will-open-its-doors-to-the-public-on-monday-27-october-2014
6. The Venice chapter, in four reports: Fashion Gone Rogue, Joanna Elizabeth, "Arizona Muse Returns for Louis Vuitton L'Invitation Au Voyage Campaign", 31 October 2013, for part two of the campaign, for the images photographed by David Sims, and for Muse taking off in a balloon outside the Louvre for Venice, where she encounters Bowie; Pursuitist, Christopher Parr, "Watch: L'Invitation au Voyage - Venice Film from Louis Vuitton with David Bowie and Arizona Muse", 10 November 2013, for Romain Gavras as director and for the red and white striped balloon carried over from the earlier film; Worldtempus, "L'Invitation au Voyage - Venice", 18 November 2013, for the film as "the second chapter" of the story and for Bowie at a harpsichord in a palazzo near Piazza San Marco performing a re-orchestrated song from The Next Day; nss magazine, "Invitation au voyage di Louis Vuitton Arizona Muse e David Bowie", 14 November 2013, for Muse's descent by balloon in Piazza San Marco, the Venetian-style masquerade ball, and Bowie's special version of "I'd Rather Be High" on a harpsichord. https://www.fashiongonerogue.com/arizona-muse-returns-louis-vuitton-linvitation-au-voyage-campaign/ https://pursuitist.com/watch-linvitation-au-voyage-venice-film-louis-vuitton-david-bowie-arizona-muse/ https://en.worldtempus.com/article/events/exhibitions/louis-vuitton-linvitation-au-voyage-venice-16142.html https://www.nssmag.com/en/fashion/5074/invitation-au-voyage-di-louis-vuitton
7. The song, in two reports: Exclaim!, Alex Hudson, news item headed "David Bowie", 7 November 2013, for the commercial showing a woman meeting Bowie at a lavish Venetian party where he performs a harpsichord version of "I'd Rather Be High", directed by Romain Gavras and starring Arizona Muse; iSpot.tv, "Louis Vuitton TV Spot, 'L'Invitation au Voyage' Featuring David Bowie", 11 November 2013, for the song credit "I'd Rather Be High", the Venice scene location and the cast of Bowie and Muse. https://exclaim.ca/music/article/david_bowie-linvitation_au_voyage_louis_vuitton_commercial https://www.ispot.tv/ad/75DB/louis-vuitton-linvitation-au-voyage-featuring-david-bowie
8. Lürzer's Archive, "The Exquisite Louis Vuitton Spot", undated, listed in the verse's sources as the trade's reading of the films' cinematic register. The page returns a 404 error and no archived copy could be retrieved, so the reading the body attributes to Lürzer's Archive could not be checked, page not reachable on 1 October 2026. https://www.luerzersarchive.com/en/features/audiovisual/audiovisual:-the-exquisite-louis-vuitton-spot-488.html
9. The later travel campaigns, in two reports added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only: Fashion Gone Rogue, Joanna Elizabeth, "Louis Vuitton Looks to the Caribbean for 'Spirit of Travel' Campaign", 26 February 2015, for the Spirit of Travel campaign photographed by Patrick Demarchelier in the French West Indies; Dazed, Elliot Hoste, "Jeremy Allen White and Pusha T hit the road in new Louis Vuitton campaign", 6 January 2026, for The Art of Travel, the Spring/Summer 2026 menswear campaign under creative director Pharrell Williams, photographed by Drew Vickers. Neither report mentions L'Invitation au Voyage, and neither mentions Bolivia. https://www.fashiongonerogue.com/louis-vuitton-looks-to-the-caribbean-for-spirit-of-travel-campaign/ https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/69374/1/louis-vuitton-jeremy-allen-white-pusha-t-ss26-campaign-pharrell-williams
